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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 29, 1999)
Funds create professorship ■ An English department search committee seeks a professor of national stature. By Kimberly Sweet Senior staff writer Nebraska native Cliff Hillegass created Cliffs Notes to help students understand literary masterpieces. Members of the University of Nebraska Lincoln’s English depart ment hope a recent donation to the University ofNebraska-Lincoln by the Cliffs Notes creator will do the same - in a different way. Thanks to a $250,000 donation from the Hillegass foundation, the English department will be home to a distinguished professor next fall.. The professorship, called the Cliff Hillegass Chair in English, will be filled by someone with expertise in 19th century American literature, said Linda Pratt, chairwoman of the English department “It will benefit us in many ways,” Pratt said. “It will allow a distin guished scholar to join our faculty, and it will also give us teaching and research help in the American litera ture program.” The expertise will extend into other areas as well, Pratt said. The Center for Great Plains Studies and 19th century studies - both u It will allow a distinguished scholar to join our faculty; and it will also give us teaching and research help.” Linda Pratt chairwoman of the English department American and British - will benefit, she said. The $250,000 gift from the Cliffs Charitable Foundation will be matched with funds from the Donald and Mildred Othmer estate. A portion of the funds from the Othmer estate had been set aside for such matching funds. The funds aim to bring professors with national and international stature to the university. Pratt said the search committee would be looking for someone who can fill die bill. “We’re looking for (someone with national stature),” Pratt said. “We think we can recruit that.” The Cliff Hillegass chairmanship in English will be the first distin guished chairmanship to be filled by someone outside the department at the time of die appointment, Pratt said. Other distinguished chairman ships have been appointed internally, she said. Along with giving money to estab lish a professorship, the Cliffs Charitable Foundation gave another $250,000 to help the Literary Research Program and Nebraska Writing Project at UNL. Terry Fairfield, president and CEO of the NU Foundation, said the dona tion was one of many Hillegass and his wife, Mary, have given to NU over the years. “The Hillegasses have displayed their generosity through time and skill as well as through their monetary gifts to the University of Nebraska,” Fairfield said in a statement. “We greatly appreciate their dedication and support.” Hillegass founded Cliffs Notes in 1948. Starting in the basement of his Lincoln home, Hillegass’ company had expanded to a warehouse and brought in an annual revenue of $12 million until it was sold in 1998 to a publishing company. Hillegass and his wife both attend ed the University of Nebraska. Cells of aborted fetuses used at NU ' CENTKK from page 1 sent,” Audi said. Robert R. Blank, chairman of Metro Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, said it was “abhorrent and repulsive” that the Medical Center would use tax dollars for experiments using aborted babies. Blank said his organization is con cerned any time public money and officials become involved with abor tion Audi said he didn’t have a position on the current Medical Center fetus research. “I am inclined to say that with the right safeguards, some procedures of this sort may be warranted,” Audi said. Safeguards include the conditions of consent, scientific quality and ethi cal conduct of the experimentation, Audi said. Medical Center Vice Chancellor Dr. William O. Bemdt told the World Herald the research has been under way for several years. He knows fetal-tissue research is controversial, Bemdt said, but it could improve the lives of many people. History has shown important scientif ic work has always been controversial, Bemdt said. “We are trying to understand the fundamental biology of human brain cells,” Bemdt said in the World «--T lam inclined to say that with the right safeguards, some procedures of this sort may be warranted.” Robert Audi UNL professor of philosophy Herald story. The research could help deter mine what goes, wrong in the brain in patients with disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. It may lead to new treatments. Bemdt declined to reveal the iden tity of die researchers at the Medical Center because of concerns about adverse public reaction. Dr. LeRoy Carhart, who runs an abortion clinic in Bellevue, provided the tissue for the research. Carhart was appointed as an unpaid faculty volunteer in October 1997. Before the fetuses are used for. research, women must agree to partic ipate and sign a release form. The Medical Center’s research raises ethical questions, Audi said, including whether people can give consent for experimental use of any human body that is not their own. That reasoning depends on whether a fetus is considered a human body, Audi said. He also questioned the father’s consent rights. “I would say that it is reasonable to think that a woman may give appro priate consent if the body is that of a fetus she has carried and is genetical ly hers.” The Medical Center does not per form elective abortions, Bemdt said. An elective abortion is an abortion that is used as a form of birth control. Carhart does not perform abor tions at the Medical Center, Bemdt sa|d, and Carhart does not teach there. The Medical Center is also involved in controversial research using embryonip stem cells, Bemdt told the World-Herald. Researchers hope to use the stem cells for treatment of a number of dis orders. Senior editor Jessica Fargen and staff writer Jill Zeman con tributed to this report. "All I want for Christmas is dailyneb.com!" —--:-t I" 1 ^ Editor: SamuStonSi . •', ’’’' | **»'■«*» Wm|t :'^ 0 <02)472-2589 Asst Ad Manager: Jamie Yeager C1**,ae“Ad “****" ■• • • •_ . _ . _ ,' ' • *<**■• • ---. ■ * • ' ■• — - — - ■'•••-- ''<■ *ts***yC''4 .*. •.-•*•*-, -«v Walk this way Liz Meacham/DN RODNEY PHELPS walks Sunday in the parking garage at the corner of 9* and 0 streets. He was replacing old license plates on his classic Chevy truck, which he stores there. •• ;$ggW- ■ RESEARCH from page 1 Torrsaid. A Research I Institution title is a good tool to gauge the amount and quality of research at UNL, and it brings researchers to the university, Torr said. The foundation’s interim classi fication system, last revised and computed in 1994, eliminates two research categories and a $40 mil lion federal funding minimum requirement. The 1994 calculation that placed UNL as a Research I Institution was an average of 1989, 1990 and 1991 figures of funding, said Norm Braaten, assistant direc tor of the Research Grants and Contracts office. The concern for prestige was one of the reasons for the founda tion’s change. The foundation’s goal for classi fication was to note the amount of research done at institutions, not to provide a ranking system or recruit ing tool, said Alex McCormick, senior scholar of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. ror better or worse, the Carnegie classification has become a statiuggHBHifeprder. That’s not whatf^p^^lpi” McCormick Hesai^edid not know how the changes would affect schools and their abilities to display their research programs. Currently, the Carnegie Foundation says a Research I Institution is one that awards at least 50 doctoral degrees per year and receives and spends at least $40 million in federal funding for research, the funding requirement being the most difficult to obtain. The changes, which will take place about mid-summer 2000, eliminate the funding requirement. But the changes extend the number of doctoral certificates granted annually to require the cer tificates be earned among at least 15 different educational areas. It also changes UNL’s title from Research I Institution title to Doctoral/Research Universities I. The technical reason for drop ping the funding requirement is because the National Science Foundation, the organization that compiles the funding statistics from 15 different federal agencies, has decreased the number of agencies that it gathers data from, making the information inaccurate, McCormick said. Torr disagreed that the National Science Foundation’s calculations were inaccurate. Though the NSF has dropped some data from agencies, Torr said, when the foundation started taking numbers from the NSF, the agencies that were dropped from calculations were not included and therefore wouldn’t affect the numbers now. The 2000 interim revisions for the Carnegie classification should be a more accurate, fair and ade quate gauge of research, McCormick said. The title Research I Institution might attract researchers to UNL, but the foundation’s classification is for educational information, not for competition between schools, said Gay Klebold, communications director of the Carnegie Foundation. The figures were supposed to be an indication of the amount of research done at an institution, Klebold said. “The classifications aren’t sup posed to be a ranking,” she said. “When you’re talking about status, that’s not what they’re used for.” The long-term plan proposed for 2005 will include a series of classifications to compare and group institutions in a variety of ways because one classification for each institution is inadequate for comparison, McCormick said.